99% Chinese Reverse ODP Consumers

Willing to Use Korea Shopping Websites Again

- To vitalize Reverse ODP, necessary to enhance redress system –

    Recently as the increasing number of foreign consumers making reverse oversea purchase in line with growing overseas direct purchase, 4Q 2016 online overseas direct sales (507.1 billion Won) surpassed overseas direct purchase (446.3 billion Won) for the first time *(Statistics Korea).

* (Overseas Direct Sales) 420.4 billion Won (4Q 2015) → 507.1 billion Won (1Q 2016) → 492.4 billion Won (2Q 2016) → 551.2 billion Won (3Q 2016)

* (Overseas Direct Purchase) 498.0 billion Won (4Q 2015) → 446.3 billion Won (1Q 2016) → 411.8 billion Won (2Q 2016) → 447.3 billion Won (3Q 2016)

    Korea Consumer Agency(www.kca.go.kr), conducted research on 1,000 Chinese consumers who have experience making purchase through Korea shopping websites within a year, and found out that generally most consumers were satisfied with their shopping experiences but, a significant percentage of consumers have experienced damage cases.

□ Consumers make purchase more for good quality reason than low price

    Reasons why Chinese consumers use Korea shopping websites are(plural response); “high quality” (58.0%) ranked the first followed by, “Reliability on authenticity” (49.8%), “Wide range of choices” (48.6%) and others. Products that consumers bought frequently (plural responses) are; “Cosmetics products” (76.9%), “Clothing” (53.2%), “Bag, wallet and other accessories” (36.7%).

    The result shows that Chinese consumers bought 32times per year on average, spent 190,000Won per a purchase, and spent up to 6million Won, also, they frequently use websites of use “Japan” (44.0%) and “U.S” (32.2%) except for Korea websites.

□ 99% of Chinese consumers using Korea shopping websites are satisfied and willing to use it once again

    According to survey conducted on the how much Chinese consumers are satisfied when using frequently used online shopping websites, the overall satisfaction level was 4.18 (out of 5), showing that they are quite satisfied*.

    Also, to an additional question of whether consumers are willing to use it next time, 99.0% of respondents said “yes”.

* Korean consumers’ overall satisfaction level on overseas shopping website was 3.78 (Overseas Direct Purchase Trend, June of ‘16)

□ 20.1% of Reverse ODP Users have experienced damage cases

    20.1% of the respondents said they have gone through “damage cases” * Those cases include (plural responses) “late delay, wrong items delivered, or missing items” (32.8%), “Refuse to exchange, cancel, refund, and delay delivery” (29.4%), “Paid excessive delivery fees and other fees” (27.9%) and others.

* Overall damage cases of Korean consumers who used overseas shopping website was 11.0% (Overseas Direct Purchase Trend, June 2016)

    Also, to question on whether they were appropriately compensated, most respondents said “Yes” (48.8%), but those who said that they did not get enough compensation took more than 50%( partially compensated 41.4%, didn’t get compensated 9.8%)

    Thus, in order to promote reverse ODP, more efforts need to be made such as decrease damage cases, and increase compensation that are intended to solve problems of foreign consumers’ damages.

□ Place importance on ODP guideline, and Korea-China cooperation on cross-border consumer

    Factors to promote safe use of Korea shopping websites includes “Devise guideline for Korea shopping website users”, “Provide comparison information on Korea shopping websites”, “Formulate system to cooperate and coordinate to redress Korean and Chinese consumers” and others.

    KCA announced a plan to expand ways to redress consumer complaint cases including reverse ODP consumers in cooperation with relevant agencies based on the research result, and rebuild related system that enables consumers to solve damage cases through “Cross Border Transaction Consumer Portal” (http://crossborder.kca.go.kr). Also, KCA plans to conduct various activities to improve overseas consumer rights by developing guidance to prevent overseas consumer complaint and by holding meetings with relevant businesses.